Shounen Club 2013.07.10 Review

Shounen Club (ザ少年倶楽部) is a music variety show usually hosted by Japanese idol group Hey! Say! Jump that showcases the song-and-dance skills of the Johnny’s Entertainment agency’s most recently debuted groups – A.B.C-Z and Sexy Zone – as well as the agency’s trainees (known as juniors). For this month, HSJ has been busy with promotional efforts, so the other two groups handled the hosting.

Juniors Jinguji Yuta-kun and Iwahashi Genki-kun handled the title call for this episode as their usual team combined with some Twenty Twenty members – most visibly Miyachika Kaito-kun and Matsuda Genta-kun – started the opening medley with “Hurricane”, “Kitto Daijoubu”, and “to the Freedom.”

Then Jesse-kun and Matsumura Hokuto-kun joined in to conclude “to the Freedom”. I have to say that the ‘dancing’ from these two left me shaking my head – it was sort of a weak attempt at sexy. Nice vocal stylings from Jesse-kun, though.

Then noon boyz mixed in with the rest for “Sakura Sake”. We also had a skateboarder and a rollerskater on stage.

It would have been good to end with “Sakura Sake”, but for some reason they went back to “Hurricane”, making for a very jarring transition.

While I appreciated the mix of juniors in the opening medley, it felt musically haphazard. The camera focus was on the most popular pairs (Jinguji-Iwahashi, Jesse-Hokuto), though Nakamura Reia-kun did his best whenever the camera swung by his way.

The primary hosts were once again Sexy Zone’s Nakajima Kento-kun, Sato Shori-kun, and Kikuchi Fuma-kun, though if last episode was any indication, A.B.C-Z will get just as much hosting time if not more.

The theme for the episode was Friends (仲間 – nakama) . . .

. . . which somehow led these three to perform a song about rivals – “GAME”.

I didn’t get a screenshot of it, but they did a three-way split screen during the performance. It seems like the director of Shounen Club is eager to try some unexpected effects out. I don’t think it had quite the effect that he or she might have been looking for, but it didn’t detract from the performance, either.

Shori-kun’s voice was weak and unexpectedly high. I thought we had heard his voice settle down into a slightly lower register, but here it was back to being very unsteady. Is it because he was sticking to his original notes in the song instead of having them transposed to his current voice?

So far in this episode, the cameras have been moving around excessively, and are getting shots that are both zoomed-in too much and way too distant. When it was too close, the foreheads of the performers kept getting cut-off. On the flip side, there’s no excuse for getting the curtain over the stage in a shot:

The dances have to be choreographed pretty precisely and I’m sure the performers go consistently to the same places on stage every time to avoid bumping into one another, so there’s no reason why the camera work couldn’t be figured out at a rehearsal. From the look of things, it’s as if the camerapeople don’t feel like they need to show up to rehearsals.

The performance itself was solid, and the song is definitely one of the better ones SZ has in its repertoire (actually, the groups has a striking number of good songs that they rarely feature on Shounen Club).

Next up, A.B.C-Z’s Kawai-kun and Totsuka-kun – the same pair that handled a lot of the hosting work in the previous episode – made their first appearance in the Ki ni Naru 2020 segment, where members of the group Twenty Twenty are introduced.

This time, we got three younger members – all in their first year of middle school.

First, Tamamoto Fumito-kun (玉元風海人), who made sure to enunciate his given name (Kawai-kun is also a Fumito, but he’s Fumi-to with two kanji whereas Tamamoto-kun is Fu-mi-to with three kanji).

The middle kid was Hayashi Ren-kun (林蓮音), who introduced himself by saying that he shared Totsuka-kun’s birthday (November 13th). Kawai-kun immediately noted that he was great at acrobatics – famous for it, even – and he got to demonstrate a phenomenal flip.

And last but not least, Haba Yuki-kun (羽場友紀) is a familiar face around the chibi juniors. It’s amazing that he’s actually older than Kuramoto Kaoru-kun, not to mention Kuramoto-kun’s senpai by a year. He introduced himself by saying that he’s a fan of Sakurai Sho-san.

Each of the three had ample time to give other details about themselves. It’s about time some of the chibis were introduced as members of Twenty Twenty – these three will be twenty years old in 2020. Many of the other members introduced so far will be even older in the group’s namesake year. I doubt the older members will still be in it by the time 2020 rolls around – they’ll either be in other debuted groups, in alternative activities, or out of the organization. These three, however, might actually still be in Twenty Twenty when it comes time to perform during the hoped-for Tokyo Olympics.

The next performance featured some juniors on the borderline between chibi and mid-teen, though their dance skills were superior to what I’d normally expect from juniors their age (or, everyone is getting shorter) as they did “Maybe Your Love”.

Even though they simply introduced as juniors, these were definitely members of Twenty Twenty. Why aren’t they introduced as members of Twenty Twenty?

The young fellows we met earlier entered the stage late, led by perennial chibi leader Inoue Mizuki-kun. But after “Maybe Your Love”, Inoue-kun’s team took the lead on the next song – Tackey-san’s “With Love”.

This seemed like a more traditional stage for the younger juniors, except that there was some added fun with fans (the kind you hold, not the kind that cheer) and there was one junior who was doing a great job laying on stylized vocals. That junior was 12 year-old Kaneda Yousei-kun (金田耀生).

I’ve been waiting to see what the younger juniors have been up to after being absent last month, and this was excellent work. Well worth the wait. The cameras also had an easier time keeping them in-frame because they don’t move around quite as much as their senpai.

A.B.C-Z’s Hashimoto-kun and Goseki-kun took care of the Kansai segment.

The task for the Kansai juniors this time was to audition for a theatrical company – basically an open invitation for them to mess around in dramatic fashion. But instead of leaving it too open-ended, they narrowed down the prompt to a specific scene where Nakama Junta-kun played a foreigner trying to ask a question in his native tongue.

It still ended up being a case of them messing around. Kiriyama-kun’s version was the best in my opinion.

For the Kansai junior live, Kin Kan started it off performing KinKi Kids’ “2nd Movement”. Nice to see them do some senpai songs, and the vocals came through well.

Being able to focus on just the three of them with the juniors backing them up was a huge improvement compared to what we normally see on the Kansai junior live – a very, very crowded stage.

This was a brilliant performance from Kin Kan. With SZ doing a three-person performance earlier in the episode, there are inevitable comparisons. Kento-kun and Fuma-kun have the clear vocal advantage. However, insofar as pulling off a cool image and being engaging, I think Kin Kan wins.

Speaking of the three SZ hosts, they got to interview Uchi Hiroki-kun next. Didn’t we already do this in the last episode? I suppose this means we’re going to get another song from him?

Yup. Uchi-kun sang Shounentai’s “Hoshikuzu no Spangle” (星屑のスパンコール – Stardust Spangle). I’ve never heard the song before and luckily, the opening verse was really simple requiring very little range, so Uchi-kun didn’t do too bad a job of it. Because it was so straightforward, he also thankfully omitted his attempt at vocal ornamentation.

By the time the first chorus came around, he had ample vocal backup. More competent vocalists including Jesse-kun, Taiga-kun and Masuda Ryo-kun, along with Yasui Kentaro-kun and noon boyz, covered up for their senpai.

Thanks to the intervention, it was a decent performance. Nothing that the juniors couldn’t have done on their own – it’s such an easy song, it’s a total yawn for them.

Kawai-kun and Totsuka-kun were back for the Ki ni Naru J segment – this time introducing a non-Twenty Twenty junior (presumably – it’s hard to keep track). As a result, we got a special dose of Hashimoto Ryo-kun’s irrepressible smile.

I don’t have a date for when he entered Johnny’s, but it must be around three years ago, so it was sort of a surprise to see that he was still only twelve.

His hobby is reading, which bodes well.

After I complained about the absence of chibis in June, suddenly we seem to be getting a flurry of them – it might be better if it was all spread out more evenly.

Next up, the Bad Boys team (Iwamoto-kun, Fukusawa-kun, and the other major junior contributors to the drama Bad Boys J) performed Kis-My-Ft2’s “Dancing Star”.

Okay, they did a great job, but here’s my problem: should I get excited about them when Bakaleya Six got no serious backing from the agency once the flurry of attention from that drama and movie died away? Won’t this group – conveniently another group of six – just go through the same arc ending with the movie release? If Bakaleya had continued to be a stable entity with some hope of debuting as a unit, I think the excitement about this Bad Boys unit would be much higher than it is, because there would be every hope that they, too, would be on the fast track. Now, though, there’s no such impression.

Kento-kun and Fuma-kun took care of their usual Shokura You Bin corner (which they handle even when HSJ is present).

But even here, they couldn’t do without A.B.C-Z members. Kawai-kun and Hashimoto-kun offered their expertise.

The experts decided they needed Uchi-kun to play a role as well – he was the friend who doesn’t say goodbye when everyone else (at a party, for instance) has left.

What should Hashimoto-kun do to encourage Uchi-kun to go home?

Kawai-kun also had to present a solution to the Uchi-won’t-go-home problem.

The audience was certainly satisfied with the result:

A.B.C-Z’s song for the episode was “My life”. It suddenly occurred to me – we’ve seen a lot of red costumes in this episode, haven’t we? SZ, Twenty Twenty, Kin Kan, and now this – it’s been red and black all the way.

The music was good and the performance reasonably sharp except for one point when the vocals from Totsuka-kun and Kawai-kun were shockingly bad.

Hashimoto-kun’s singing is a saving grace, though.

Okay, on to Junior ni Q, which was hosted by . . . you guessed it! Kawai-kun and Totsuka-kun!

The first junior to tell us what he likes to eat when the weather’s hot was Hokuto-kun, who answered with green tea.

Kawai-kun got on his case because it isn’t something you eat, but I’m on Hokuto-kun’s side on this one as I was with Nakamura Reia-kun. In the summer, the line between food and drink becomes blurry, especially once your ice cream melts.

I think Sanada Yuma-kun answered with cucumber, which is a fair choice.

Miyachika-kun went with starch syrup (水あめ), which wouldn’t go down well for me.

Yasui Kentaro-kun opted for . . . what the heck is ethnic (エスニック) supposed to mean? He offers tom yum goong – a Thai soup dish – as an example.

Next up, a mysterious hooded figure took to the stage to perform the song “FaKe”, which he wrote the lyrics to.

It was Kikuchi Fuma-kun, and while I love his singing, the music irritated the heck out of me – I don’t do the obnoxiously electronic style.

I also could have done without the rap portion – it would have been a beautiful vocal performance without it.

So . . . call it a mixed bag on this one. Just not my style.

With that, it was time to call it a night, and the job of closing things out was left to . . . yes, A.B.C-Z. They did “Dream ~５つの願い~” (Dream Itsutsu no Negai).

It was an appropriate finale song and Kawai-kun and Totsuka-kun both found their notes and the right tone in this one.

While there were other juniors on stage, it was definitely an A.B.C-Z moment.

So, how about some omake? Wait, it’s Uchi-kun . . . maybe I’ll pass . . . but hold on – is Shori-kun seriously giving Uchi a signed Shori uchiwa as a gift!?

And that’s the way it was.

Once again, I felt really positive about the first half, and then less enthusiastic about the latter portion of the show. Camera work aside, I thought the opening was all right though far from a highlight and the SZ performance was about the same. The highlights were the Twenty Twenty, Kin Kan, and Bad Boys performances. Nothing wrong with the A.B.C-Z offerings except for that Kawai-Totsuka singing iffiness I noted, but I also felt like I saw way too much of A.B.C-Z in this episode, particularly by the time we got to their performances near the end. The talk portions also seemed to dominate the second half of the show.

The Fuma performance is a bit difficult to judge – it’ll depend heavily on the viewer’s preferred style of music.

We got some new material in this episode, but nothing that really grabbed my attention.

Except for the three highlight performances, this episode was generally weaker than the last episode, so I have to give it a 7 out of 10. I’ll be looking forward to HSJ’s return next month.

Wow, more than 5 years! No wonder I’ve seen him around so much. I knew he was in SPG, but I didn’t know whether he was part of it from the start or got added in later.

Performance-heavy . . . well, it had all the usual talk segments, but I suppose what anyone thought about the episode would be dependent on the performances. The talk segments all seemed forgettable (at least, compared to last week’s Tsuka-Darkness and return of Marius-kun an Sou-kun). My own estimation was based on comparing this episode directly to last week’s, so I’d be curious to know which of the two July episodes you preferred.

Considering how young Hashimocchan is, it would surprise anyone how long he’s been in the company. Haba Yuki is another one that’s surprising since he’s been there just as long.

I think I prefer this episode as opposed to the last one, at least when it comes down to the performances. Although, I did very much enjoy the MariSou talk in the first one. Tsuka-Darkness was a highlight in the last episode as well. But, the performances are what I liked this week.

For the opening medley – I don’t think Takahashi Fu was there with that group? I have a feeling he doesn’t get pushed as much anymore especially since Kishi returned to Shokura from doing Endless SHOCK.

And Game is one of my favourite SZ songs! Although to be honest my favourite performances of it were the ones with only Kento and Fuma in it.

I was so excited to hear that the chibi juniors finally got some time to shine on Shokura! As for their ages – Hayashi Ren, Haba Yuki, Inoue Mizuki and Hashimoto Ryo are all the same age as Kuramoto Kaoru, they’re all in their first year of middle school. Tamamoto Fumito is a year older than them, so he’s in the second year of middle school (same as Matsuda Genta, which is quite unbelievable since their height difference is pretty large).

Haba Yuki, Inoue Mizuki and Hashimoto Ryo were in SPG, so they probably joined in 2009. Initially when SPG was formed it was a group of older juniors, but then probably to reduce their average age they replaced some of the older ones with the chibi juniors for the single release.

But anyway I really love the performance with the chibi juniors, I would love to hear Kaneda Yousei sing live (Was that performance live? I find it hard to tell sometimes) to see if his vocals are really that good.

About the Bad Boys juniors, I really wanna hear your opinion on whether you think BBJ team or Bakaleya team would make a better group (just curious to know :)). Because I’m biased towards Bakaleya so I would obviously prefer the Bakaleya team.😄 And the Bakaleya members just feel like they get along better to me.

Lastly, I totally agree with you about Fuma’s solo, it’s not really my style of music either. Too bad Fuma seems to like this kind of music, meh.

Good point – I didn’t see Takahashi-kun, either. It could just be that he had other commitments or was sick on the rehearsal/filming day, since there was no particular reason to exclude him. In general, though, I expect that you have a point and that the agency does have an interest in pushing Kishi-kun before Takahashi-kun, since the former is 17 and the latter is 15. I’m not too worried about Takahashi-kun since he’s got those extra years to work with and already has substantial name recognition. Besides, Kishi-kun has a drama role this season and people with dramas get more prominence on SC while the show is going, but quickly drop back to a default position afterward.

Agreed – “Game” should be a Kento-Fuma song. Shori-kun looked out of place. Thinking about it, I have a lot of SZ songs that I like – “Kazo wo Kitte”, “High High People”, “Silver Moon”, “If You Wanna Dance”, “GAME”, “Kimi to … Milky Way”, “We can be one”, “Teleportation”, “rouge”, and their rendition of “Yuuki 100%”. Oh, and “Bad Boys”. And I think I’d throw “Kyou wa Arigatou” and “Namae no Nai Omoi” in as lesser favs.

Ah, thank you for the clarification of their grade levels. Those middle schoolers! Most of them look like they should be in elementary school, but some of them look like they’re already high schoolers!

I admit to not paying much attention to SPG in 2009 – I was only watching Shounen Club for Hey! Say! Jump and eventually B.I.Shadow back then. So, I only have a vague recollection of seeing Yuki-kun, Inoue-kun Hashimoto-kun around for a long time. It’ll be amazing to see them when their 18 or 20 and to look back on all these years.

It is very difficult to try to figure out if the vocals are really being sung live, and I generally try not to as long as I believe it’s actually their voice, which is usually unmistakable. I hope they didn’t show Kaneda-kun sing the vocals like that if he didn’t have the capability, since it sets up distorted expectations and does him no good for the future. There have been subtler cases where they’ve depicted a junior singing something he couldn’t really have sung at all, but nothing at this level. The default should be to have them do it properly live, but if for some reason the live-recorded vocals didn’t turn out right, it’s possible to have them re-record it in-studio and have the audio engineers mix the clean version in for the broadcast. I can’t say what’s actually happening without attending a SC recording myself.

I prefer the Bakaleya team on the condition that we get less rapping and more diversification away from being a KAT-TUN cover group. I like the personalities and the chemistry in the Bakaleya team (including Jesse and Hokuto), and also feel that they have more going for them in terms of acting potential and variety show potential. I think I’ve also developed an older brother protective mentality toward Kouchi-kun. The Bad Boys team was put together largely as a reflection of the success of Bakaleya, but they were not the main characters in their respective drama – they were overshadowed by Kento-kun, Hashimoto-kun, and Nikaido-kun. Also, because they were in different groups in the drama, we really didn’t get to see their chemistry in that context, and we also haven’t seen them interviewed as a group (as far as I know). I think Iwamoto-kun and Fukusawa-kun have personalities I’d like to see more of, Yasui-kun is occasionally amusing and Hagiya-kun undoubtedly talented. And . . . that’s where my impressions run out.

Yeah, Fuma-kun certainly prefers this style and . . . I wish he didn’t. Even though his voice is brilliant, the way he puts it to use ends up making me shake my head. That said, there’s got to be an audience for this style, and I’m sure they’re happy with it, but it’s never going to get rave reviews from me.

I really liked the first part ^^ Though I found it strange, that they would mix Hokuto-Jessie with Sexy Boyz. They would usually leave them singing alone…It did seem off, but probably just because I m used to SB and especially Genki singing that song, with no other older Juniors’s act, and also used to see a clear separation between Bakaleya/Noon Boyz etc and the youngest one from Sexy Boyz and chibis during a performance. Let alone Jessie and Hokuto who have their very own.

Not surprised about the skate, Reia did some during crea and apparently he also did it previously in SC…And during this very song I think ? As for Kakuta Yusei, he is almost always on skate, even during Ongaku no Hi during Sexy Zone performance.

During Game tey sure insisted on Shori. I m honestly not sure I have seen him so much in this son ever …Especially since we got so much less of Fuma …Though his dance may have been part of the reason. He wasn’t energic, and doing the dance half heartedly.

I m pretty sure even if he ” knows” it’s too high for him, Shori will continue on singing that song that way for years, the same way Chinen is stuck with high pitched notes especially in HSJ ”old” songs (such as their debut single and those after) when I think he would do better singing lower key such as in Just for You. He probably has to stuck to the original song as much as he can.

I was happy to see Hayashi Ren ^^ He is such a talented guy. I never look up birthdays so I didn’t know Haba Yuki was actually the same age as Kuramoto Oo I was surprised, and Fumito as Matsuda Genta.

”Or everyone is getting shorter” lol. But yeah, there were mostly 2020…I m not sure everyone was though, because we still don’t really know all the members, and some of them had yet to be presented as such…So maybe ? But you re right, but for one two, all of them were 2020

Kaneda Yusei is so very talented ^^especially in dance. I was very happy to see him, and even more to hear him sing ! It was a nice surprise.

The Kansai part was funny ^^and I would have voted for Ryuji too lol. Glad too see Kin Kan, this make me hope for more Kansai Jr performance and maybe get more well known through Ki ni Naru K. It was a nice performance, not my type of songs, but yeah they were very cool in it.

I feel like they stayed less with the theme this time than for example with Rain. Though JE has many songs about friendship (such as Seishun Amigo), so it shouldn’t have been difficult to find something else than …Game for example. Game is not really the first song that came to my mind when I think friendship, but oh well

The camera work was much better. And they really tried to do something with the stages ( I mean the stars during Bad Boy J unit part, and then the lightening and stage during Fuma’s song) They still couldn’t make the fog work well during Fake. Poor Juniors who got completely smoked away in that part lol, at the end.

I think we share the same feelings about Fake. At first, I really wasn’t sure about the song. But then, he began to sing, and it went better and better. I went from ” no ” to ” I can listen to this ” and ended in ” this is a cool song, I like it” . I was actually surprised because his vocals weren’t good at all in the previous episode, his dance in Game, I already told you of my opinion of it though is vocals were good even if not as good as usual…And here in this it got really better in both voice and dance….And in this song it was great.

I would have done without the rap part and the ” Get Get Get Get it” part…Mainly, I would have enjoyed it much more if we could hear his vocals through most of the song. There are some really great moment in it.

. And done without ”putting back my hair behind my ears twice in 10 seconds” while looking straight at the camera lol. Especially in that part of the song with those lyrics at that moment. I mean, we know they do it on purpose, usually they try to make it appear as not really thinking whiel doing it, but here it was…too much ?

Made me remember Fumi’s words about how next time he will show his other ear, lol.

Surprised also by seeing Sexy Boyz (+ Miyacchika, but he has been on more than once SB performance with SZ ) as backdancers and not …I don’t know olders ?

I feel like this episode was really ” chibis” centered. Most of the older acts but for the Bad Boy J unit, were not seen much. Not criticizing here. I was happy to see the chibis ^^ and we got pretty much all of the chibi 6 getting presented but for Mizuki Inoue but he is a really familiar face, and Kaneda but still they got their share of spotlihgt being the ”vocalist” during with you

Speaking of Bad Boy J unit, the dancing was once again really great. I know the song too well, so I feel like their voice wasn’t strong enough for it, but they did an okay job,still. I honestly feel like this isn’t just a Bakaleya 2 situation that make people more reticent to be behind the group. If this go on, Snow Man fans are going to really NOT take the performances well…Though I suppose they may already be really annoyed with it, seeing as it s been also a while we didn’t see the three other members.

I can’t say if I prefered Bakaleya or BBJ unit. On one hand Bakaleya had strong vocalist, and a really good chemistry, on the other hand BBJ are really great dancers who work well together on stage ( I m not speaking chemistry but…”show”) and they also do quite good with songs.

This performance was my favorite with With Love.

Hahaha maybe it s a question of language ? I don’t know about english, but I know in french, if someone asked me about food, and I would answer a drink, I would get wronged immediately ? Not even by someone who would pick on on the fact that he said ” food” or something ” edible”, but quite …naturally ? It would definitely count as something completely different.

I hope the food corner will stop. I skipped half of the talk .

I like the Shokura Youbin. Both moments were funny, though I think I preferred Hasshi’s.

We are on the same page about Uchi. His performance started nice with his voice…But when it was going to become more ” difficult” they bring out Juniors…Which makes me wonder if he isn’t one of the Js who sounds better when his voice is mixed with others, rather than lead vocalist as they present him. I was really surprised they would bring Juniors in a solo performance by a guest ( I mean, Juniors really singing not just backdancing, or as back up voices) though I can understand.

I liked the song and also the performance. I didn’t know it, but just like you I thought during it that Juniors would have done a good job also alone. Maybe even better (and as a closing song, it would do good too, wouldn’t it?)

I didn’t realize before you said it, about the red color. ABC-Z were wearing their PV My Life costume, and Kin Kan are often in red, so I didn’t realize…But yeah when they put together the episode, they really didn’t think of a color theme it seems. I was a bit disappointed by ABC-Z performance, not about vocals ( I had to listen more than once because you said Fumi and Tottsu were sounding really terrible, but I can’t find it I least not in this song…You were speaking of the part where Fumi and Tottsu sing one after another just before Hasshi’s part, ? Either I am too used to it, or I really don’t here any thing ? They sound almost the same in here and in the CD…Am I being too biaised ?)

I was disappointed a bit by the dance, it was less good than what they usually do. Tottsu especially is dancing less well than usually.

Hasshi s voice is getting better and better ^^ and he is finally 20 years old.😄

I was surprised we got another ABC-Z performance afterwards. And that song. Then, I remembered the theme + the fact that this song is featured on their new DVD released that very same day ( I mean, the day they broadcast SC). I actually found their vocals, especially Hasshi’s actually weaker here during the high notes . My feelings about it though, may be due to the fact that despite having beautiful lyrics, I really don’t like much the song musically. It s one of my less favorite from them.

We sure saw even less SZ here Oo I was going to sigh and complain about how we didn’t see MariSo…But we didn’t see Shori that much ever in here…And they weren’t even there for the closing time.

Haha I prefered this episode to the previous one xDDD By a long shot. Still less good than June’s episode, but better than the previous one. But for the talk. Talk were better in the previous episode.

No problem – I fixed it for you (I only edit other people’s comments if they make it clear they want it done, or there’s some link issue). I’ll reply to your review of the episode later in the day – got work to do first🙂

Well, a bit of mixing is good, and I’m sure Johnny’s wants to keep things fresh so people don’t get bored with the show. The opening is an easy place to do that, since it’s always been very mixed-up anyway.

It’s true that Shori-kun’s dancing didn’t seem 100%. I wonder why the quality of his dancing seems so variable – maybe he’s not getting enough time to practice? I don’t know how much burden his school work plus his role in Summer Nude is putting on him.

I really hate it when they don’t adjust after their voice has changed – it doesn’t do anyone any good.

I haven’t seen much of Hayashi Ren-kun yet, but since you say he’s talented, I’ll keep an eye out for him.

Because of the database, it’s easy for me to look up their birthdates while writing the Shounen Club articles. By the same token, I need to figure out who counts as Twenty Twenty so I can update the database with the info once I get the chance.

Kaneda-kun was certainly a surprise to me. I’ll be keeping my ear primed to hear more from him.

Good point about Seishun Amigo! I would have liked to see the Iwamoto-Jinguji team do that – I think it’s more something for their age than Bad Boys or Bakaleya, but maybe the older juniors could have done it.

My theory is that Fuma-kun probably did this performance of “FaKe” first, and then did the performances we saw last week, and that would explain why his voice seemed more worn out in those. That’s just an idea, though. Dumping the rap part would have been enough for me to be all right with the song.

Ah, the hair thing. I guess I sort of take that for granted. I don’t really understand all the little things they do for the female fans, and try to be cautious about criticizing them on it since they know a lot more about what the fans like than I do. Maybe the first hair-behind-ear-push was intentional, then he did the second one reflexively? I can’t imagine he planned to do both deliberately, but I can’t say.

SB are sort of perennial backdancers, aren’t they? I mean, insofar as they’re called SB, they’re the backdancers for SZ anyway.

No question about it – this was a chibi episode. Wish they had spread it out a bit more so I didn’t have to complain about the lack of chibis last month. This time we got chibi overdose.

Agreed on the effect on Snow Man fans, though I suppose Bakaleya would have had the same impact on Hip Hop Jump fans (since Hagiya-kun among others wasn’t included). Then again, Hip Hop Jump had a more variable line-up while Snow Man has been consistent. I don’t know – I was never a Snow Man booster, and barely had a sense of the members until Iwamoto-kun and Fukusawa-kun impressed me in this drama. Even when they were Mis Snow Man with the Noon Boyz included, the trouble was always the voices – I didn’t see any future for the group because they lacked the ability to deliver compelling vocals. That might be a problem with Bad Boys, too.

And I guess that’s another reason I prefer Bakaleya over Bad Boys – the vocals on the Bakaleya side was definitely stronger.

It counts as something different in English as well – I’m sort of being funny by giving the juniors credit for drinks. I justify it not because of language, but because of ice cream. Do you eat ice cream or drink ice cream? In the summer, it all depends how quickly you finish it.

Junior ni Q really is getting to be a food corner, isn’t it? I guess that’s the one thing that they can always count on juniors to be ready to talk about.

Uchi-kun is fine in a harmony situations. He can do a duet as long as the other singer has the clear lead part. It’s really when he tries to put ornamentation on his vocals and reach for notes he can’t hit solidly that he gets into trouble. Usually, it’s fair to think of Johnny’s as a meritocracy, but Uchi-kun irritates me because he clearly defies the expectation that the better performers get pushed forward.

Yes, it would definitely have worked as a ending song for the episode.

On the A.B.C-Z performance, the part I was referring to was as you said – the bit where the two of them sing one right after the other, and then Hashimoto-kun follows. Maybe it was just because I’m not used to it, or the contrast between their vocals and Hashimoto-kun’s voice. It just stuck out at me.

I really didn’t know what to think about the dancing. I think I just scored it as a primarily vocal performance, and in that light gave full credit to Hashimoto-kun.

I suppose after he made the effort in the first performance, it made sense that Hashimoto-kun wasn’t quite as strong in the finale, but the song didn’t really demand much. Musically, it’s not a very exciting song, so I understand why you’re lukewarm about it. I just shrugged and saw it as a decent song to end things with – I’d find it boring (especially compared to what A.B.C-Z usually does) if they did it at any point except the end. As you said, maybe having the Uchi + juniors performance at the end would have been good. But, with the A.B.C-Z DVD coming out on the 10th, I think it’s fair that they gave A.B.C-Z two performances. Next time, though, they shouldn’t have A.B.C-Z handle so much of the hosting duties, because it’s better if they’re as fresh when they do their performances – both in terms of audience perception and in terms of energy.

I was certainly unhappy that we didn’t get any Marius-Sou follow-up, especially since their only performance didn’t even make it clear whether they were back with SZ or not – I would have liked to see the five person SZ without the SB backing, in other words, and they could have replaced “GAME” with any number of other songs SZ has that fits the theme “Nakama” better. I’d vote for “We can be one”, since that actually has “nakama” in the lyrics. The other SZ members could do with more experience being the interviewers instead of the interviewees, so maybe Kento-kun and Shori-kun should have done the Junior ni Q segment to lift some of the burden off of Kawai-kun and Totsuka-kun (since Fuma-kun had a solo performance this time).

Hmm, fair enough on liking this episode more. It was pretty close – the real gap was with the June episodes, like you said.

Oh I was speaking about Fuma’s dancing in Game. I feel like he wasn’t fully in it.

I didn’t think of it like that, but you re probably right, he may have performed that song first! It would make sense.

Haha to be fair, Yamapi and Kame were older than most Bakaleya and BBJ boys when they did Seishun Amigo (and their performed it every six month or so for few years afterwards xD)…But I see what you mean about Jinguji-Genki doing it. It s also a question of image, I see them more doing that, than for example the other duo we have Jesse-Hokuto

haha yes, I can understand your point ^^ x) I tend to judge those small things they do for fans, because I m one of the targeted audience( well I suppose ? ). Well, not judge ( for example,the small showing off skin, my opinion /taste on it isn’t important, and I see why he is rightfully doing that.) but if I think that s a bit ” too much” I will comment ^^ have slight fun with that part :p Which I totally did here

Yeah, I think we’ve covered the Fuma-kun issue with the theory that we’re seeing the performances out of order.

If you remember the Seishun Amigo video, though, Yamapi and Kame-kun were backed by a whole host of younger juniors, including Yuto-kun. I also remember Yuto-kun and Yamada-kun performing it on Shounen Club when they were about the Jinguji-Genki age, and I think it was that Yuto-Yamada pairing that I was tapping into rather than the Yamapi-Kame pair, which was tied to a drama, after all. As you said, it’s also a question of image since Jesse-Hokuto are doing more mature stuff.

Please do comment about on those little things that they do – your reaction gives me a better idea of what other fans might think about it.